Week 1: How am I an artist?
Mudpies
and dirt people.
“The
opposite of war isn’t peace. It’s creation.”
Lyric from La Vie Bohem from RENT.
Every
child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when you grow up. –Pablo
Picasso
Genesis 2:4-7
These are the
generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
At
the time when Yhwh made the heavens and the earth, there was still no wild bush
on the earth nor had any wild plant sprung up, for Yhwh had not yet sent rain
to the earth, and there was no human being to till the soil. Instead, a flow of
water would well up from the ground and irrigate the soil. So Yhwh fashioned an
earth creature out of the clay of the earth, and blew into its nostrils the breath
of life. And the earth creature became a living being.
To
call ourselves “artistic Christians” is not to try and make painters or writers
or pastry chefs out of people who are inherently uncreative. Rather, it is to
reclaim the God-given creativity that each of us was born with. Each of us is
hard-wired for creativity. It’s right there in our DNA. Our culture mistrusts
creativity and the artistic and as such has worked every day of our lives to
squash the artistic impulse. In our SCUCC vision statement, saying that we are
artistic is to embrace God’s desire and dream for us. It is to reclaim who we
truly are
A
workbook that saved my life at one particularly dry time is “The Artist’s Way”
by Julia Cameron. Cameron does not believe that creativity and spirituality are
two separate things, they are expressions of the same thing. In her book,
Cameron offers 10 principles of Creativity:
1.
Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
2. There is an underlying,
in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life -- including ourselves.
3. When we open ourselves to our
creativity, we open ourselves to the creator's creativity within us and our
lives.
4. We are, ourselves, creations.
And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is God's gift to
us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
6. The refusal to be creative is
self-will and is counter to our true nature.
7. When we open ourselves to
exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
8. As we open our creative
channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves
up to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and
yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move
toward our divinity.
The scripture from Genesis is
the picture of a child playing in the mud. The dirt is moist from the primordial
springs. The playful God scoops up a handful of the damp soil (in Hebrew the
word for it “ha-adamah”), and sculpts a form from it. Pleased with the
sculpture, God then blows the spirit/breath into its nostrils and bring to life
this earth-creature (in Hebrew, literally “adam”). So, the name of the very
first human being is “Dirt,” or “Mud.”
I find it disheartening to see
an adult scold a child for playing in the mud. I don’t think the aphorism that “cleanliness
is next to Godliness” actually came from God. Playing in the mud is next to
Godliness.
For this first week of the
Vision series I envision (ha!) a few pieces:
·
hand out cards with the vision statement on it
·
focusing the Studio on the 10 principles,
possibly breaking them into chunks
·
interrupting the flow at irregular intervals
with creativity quotes (both spoken and visual)
·
a possible threshold moment of making mudpies,
or finger painting or some such messy play
·
we need to announce this year’s Artfest (Feb 19)and
invite people to get started
